Rio Rancho sees decline in violent crime, despite surge in homicides

By Jesse Jones

Violent crime in Rio Rancho is shifting — while homicides have risen, aggravated assaults and reported rape cases have dropped. New crime data from the Rio Rancho Police Department’s 2024 Annual Report paints a picture of declining violent crime in the area.

Violent crime in Rio Rancho dropped about 20% from 2022 to 2024, but the numbers tell a more mixed story. Homicides increased from 3 to 8, while aggravated assaults fell 15% and reported rapes dropped nearly 19%, according to Rio Rancho police data based on the  FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System.

“We’ve grown the police department by at least 15 sworn officers, plus the six PSAs and some civilian employees within the department to help them accomplish the goals that we’ve put before them,” Mayor Gregg Hull said on the Mayor Hull Podcast. “And that’s keeping crime down in Rio Rancho.”

Hull said the city’s approach — boosting police staffing, funding specialized units and prioritizing community engagement — appears to be contributing to the broader decline in violent crime.

The Rio Rancho Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Division handles criminal offenses, collects evidence and analyzes crime trends. The division includes the Violent Crimes Unit (VCU), Property Crimes Unit (PCU) and Special Victims Unit (SVU).

The VCU investigates aggravated assaults, robberies, homicides and missing persons. The unit, made up of one sergeant and four detectives, also responds to crime scenes to collect and preserve evidence.

Homicides

In 2024, the unit handled eight homicides, up from three in 2022 and two in 2023. Despite this increase, the unit saw a 2% drop in overall cases from 2022 to 2024. Most of the unit’s cases involve missing or runaway persons and unattended deaths.

According to Hull, the national average for homicides per 100,000 people is about 7.5. 

“Rio Rancho has been well below the national average, and we want to be below the national average,” Hull said.

In a KOB-TV report, Rio Rancho Police Capt. Jacquelynn Reedy said of the eight homicides in 2024, seven arrests have been made, with suspects in jail until trial. 

“Five of those [homicides] are domestic violence that happened basically inside somebody’s home. One of them happened in somebody’s car and then four of them happened either inside somebody’s home or just out in their front yard,” Hull said. “There’s not much you can do about that, you can’t put a police officer in every home and you don’t want a government camera monitoring you.”

Sexual assaults

Reported sexual assaults dropped about 15.5% from 2022 to 2024, covering rape, sodomy, sexual assault with an object and forcible fondling or molestation.

The Special Victims Unit (SVU) includes one sergeant, four detectives, one task force officer with the FBI’s Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory and two civilian staff from the Crime Victim Assistance Unit, which supports victims in Rio Rancho and Sandoval County. SVU handles cases like sexual assault, abuse and neglect of kids and the elderly, internet crimes with child exploitation and domestic violence.

In 2024, SVU closed 155 felony cases, including some older ones, and took on 163 new cases. Of the closed cases, 31% went to the District Attorney’s Office or ended with an arrest. The rest were closed for various reasons, such as lack of evidence, being outside the city’s jurisdiction or being handed off to other agencies, according to the report.

Reported rapes in Rio Rancho fell nearly 19%, from 43 in 2022 to 35 in 2024. The department also saw a drop in molestation cases, from 32 in 2022 to 26 in 2024, with four sodomy cases and no sexual assault with an object in 2024, according to the report.

Assaults

Assaults, which include aggravated and simple assaults, increased over 25% in two years.

The majority of the assault offenses came from simple assaults, which saw almost a 43% increase from 834 in 2022 to 1,191 in 2024.

Hull said simple assault is when “I walk up and push you, and you decide I’ve assaulted you.” It can involve bruising or a slight cut.

“That’s why we just ask everybody always to bring the temperature down,” Hull said. “Because it just gets everybody angry, and you don’t know how things are going to unfold.”

However, aggravated assault, which involves serious injury or a weapon, dropped 15% in Rio Rancho, from 342 cases in 2022 to 289 in 2024, according to the report.

“That’s another big drop,” Hull said.

ABQ and statewide

Crime in Albuquerque has trended down since 2017, according to the Albuquerque Journal. The Albuquerque Police Department’s  2024 crime stats show that violent crime rose less than 1% last year. FBI crime data shows that violent crime in New Mexico dropped 6% from 2022 to 2023, but 2024 state data is still incomplete as not all law enforcement agencies have reported.

Nationwide, law enforcement clears more violent crimes than others, with the FBI reporting a 52.3% clearance rate for homicides, 41.4% for aggravated assaults, 26.1% for rapes and 23.2% for robberies in 2022.